I Have Many Titles

Lost and Found.

Stop and Start.

In Which the School Year Does Not Get Off the Way I Envisioned.

Pick one, any title will work. We were off school today to help our good friends pack up and move away. Enjoyed being off school. Did not enjoy why. The collective girls got to play together all afternoon and then we all went to one of our regular hang-outs to eat. And then we said good-bye.

Thankfully, we have reservations to go camping together again this October. So---six weeks or so and we'll get to see each other again.

It doesn't change the fact that we will walk through the doors at church every week now and they won't be there. Our lives just changed for sure. It hasn't fully hit me yet.

While we were at their house today I got the call that my uncle had died. This is the uncle who taught me how to tie my shoes when I was 5. He teased a lot. I always liked him when I was little. I started to tell funny stories about him in the car to the girls and then realized I was going to cry if I kept talking so I quit. But he was funny. Funny and sad.

He was married for a while and we didn't like his step-kids. We were thrown together with them and expected to play of course. Because that's how it is with kids. Mostly, he was a bachelor. And he lived alone. My grandmother worried about him a lot. Everyone else had families. He had a lot of nieces and nephews.

He would hand my older cousin some money and tell her to go buy us all Christmas presents. We found out later that it wasn't much money to buy for that many people. So THAT is why we each got a pair of crazy socks or pantyhose. She did a great job shopping for him.

One year he made the mistake of spouting off that he hated Brut cologne. So we all--every single member of our extended family--bought him a bottle of Brut that year for Christmas. It was beyond funny watching him open them all.

I would go stay with my grandmother for a week or two in the summers when I was 14 or 15 years old. Old enough to go alone and stay but too young to have a life or a job or a car so going there was exciting. One morning when I was there my grandmother went out on the front porch to sweep and nearly had a heart attack. My uncle had brought his laundry by and left it on the porch. He was pretty round most of my life and he had stuffed all his dirty clothes into one pair of his overalls and tossed them up there. She said she thought a dead man was laying on her porch.

He was bald just like my dad, but actually a bit balder. He ALWAYS wanted us to say HE had more hair than our Daddy, but we wouldn't. So one time he met us at the door with a wig on his head and said, "Who has more hair now??" Silly man.

He didn't go to church and I think that worried my grandmother more than anything else. I hope he got things right before he passed away but I don't know.

He was the baby brother. He should still be here. I hate cancer.

And so we will be off school again tomorrow to go be with our family and have a memorial service. Then we will come home and S will start preaching at church. And we will start school (again).

I think I've had enough changes to my life for now.